Author: Amy Diaz

A teen just can’t not open the obviously evil Book of the Dead, thus releasing demons or whatever and leading to a tsunami of gore, in Evil Dead Rise.

The movie actually starts at an A-frame cabin of devilry out in the woods. After some creepy voice work and R-rated violence, we jump back one day and meet Beth (Lily Sullivan), some kind of tech worker for a rock band. When Beth realizes she is unexpectedly pregnant, she rushes to visit her older sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland). But Ellie has problems of her own: her husband (and the father of her three kids) has taken off, and the building where they live in a someteenth floor apartment is being torn down, necessitating a stressful move. Teens Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Danny (Morgan Davies) and younger sister Kassie (Nell Fisher) are further traumatized when they’re caught in the building’s parking garage during a large earthquake. The supports shake, the ground cracks — so naturally when Danny spots a hole leading below the unstable structure into an old bank vault, why not climb down? And why not take the veiny, fang-having book he finds down there along with accompanying record albums — hey, the kids love vinyl!

Danny and Bridget argue over what to do with the book; Danny thinks their mom could sell it for big money (to whom?) and Bridget is like “go put it back.” Danny says, sure, tomorrow, after I flip through these pages full of disturbing imagery and play the records full of incantations. Even though Danny did the summoning, it’s Ellie who is the first to become possessed — all cadaver-ish skin and unnerving vocal changes. The last thing she says before the real Ellie is overtaken by the possessor is a plea to Beth to take care of her babies, a task that would be easier if the cell phones weren’t down and the building’s stairs hadn’t collapsed.

This movie is not terribly made — there is a respectable ocean of stage blood and the slightest dusting of evil-demon sass. But its most stand-out images are largely riffs on similar images or scenes from other movies — previous Evil Deads but also The Shining, maybe Fargo. It has that odd time-out-of-time quality that some recent horror movies have, where cars and clothes could have you thinking you’re watching something set in the late 1970s but also there are cell phones. The final fight scene has its charms.

It’s all fine, I guess, if this is your thing, but it doesn’t have any staying power beyond the moment you’re watching the movie. This is not a movie I will be thinking about for weeks. This is likely not a movie I’ll still be thinking about by the time you read this review. There’s a pokiness about the film — even when the “Evil”-ing had begun, I still felt like things hadn’t really gotten going, like the motor hadn’t fully kicked on in this movie. C, maybe a C+ for not really doing anything wrong and for having Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi credited as executive producers.

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence and gore, and some language, according to the MPA at filmratings.com. Written and directed by Lee Cronin, Evil Dead Rise is an hour and 37 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by New Line Cinema.

Featured photo: Evil Dead Rise

Renfield (R)

Dracula’s familiar would like to reevaluate his toxic work situation in Renfield, a gore-filled and yet very cute comedy.

Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), he of the bug-eating and the “yes, master”-ing, is sick of working for Dracula (Nicolas Cage), a total diva of a boss who makes Renfield bring him people to eat. And, much in the manner of Miranda Priestly demanding very specific coffee from Starbucks, Dracula can be picky about the quality of the humans he’s offered. Dracula is also sort of low on funds after centuries of having to make getaways when his bloodlust is found out, so Renfield has to take care of an injured and slowly recovering Dracula in an abandoned hospital in New Orleans. And to procure these people for which he is shown little appreciation, he has to eat bugs, which give him a shot of Dracula strength.

Perhaps it’s good that Renfield has found a support group for people who are also in toxic relationships. He can listen to other people talk about how hard it is to stand up to the people who have power over them — and he can go find those bullies and drag them to Dracula, which makes Renfield feel like all his murder isn’t, you know, all bad.

But a complainy Dracula sends Renfield out to find a better group of people for his boss to eat — nuns or cheerleaders or something, Dracula says, with much the same energy of a louche aging rock star demanding a better class of groupies. Renfield heads to a club to do just that but ends up in the middle of a gangland hit. Tedward Lobo (Ben Schwartz — just 100 percent doing Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation), son of Lobos gang head Bellafrancesca Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo), is there with a bunch of goons to kill Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), a police officer who is determined to bring down the Lobos (who killed her police officer father). Rebecca doesn’t blink when Tedward holds a gun to her head, instantly dazzling Renfield with her strength and bravery. Thusly he finds a bug to eat and helps her defeat the Lobos. Of course the Lobos don’t love this, so they go looking for Renfield just as Renfield starts to make a serious attempt to break away from Dracula, getting his own studio apartment and buying some pastel sweaters from Macy’s.

Renfield is good-naturedly silly — a good-naturedly silly movie where sometimes dudes get their arms torn off. It keeps the vampire lore to a minimum, goes easy on the quippiness (it’s there but it’s not wall to wall) and offers plenty of opportunities for Nicolas Cage to just take center stage and do his thing. And does he! He dives in with enthusiasm and fully commits to every increasingly hammy bit of Dracula-ness. I’ll bet those spiky teeth he has to wear were unpleasant to have in his mouth but he really does make every moment count with his open-mouth hisses and big vampire smiles. Everything about him, from the increasingly slicked back hair to his specific style of imperious whining, is just note-perfect. B-

Rated R for bloody violence, some gore, language throughout and some drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Chris McKay with a screenplay by Ryan Ridley, Renfield is a brisk hour and 33 minutes long and distributed by Universal Studios.

The Pope’s Exorcist (R)

Russell Crowe eagerly tucks into the plate of spicy meat-ah-balls that is his Italian accent in The Pope’s Exorcist, which is based on the real life of the Rev. Gabriele Amorth — have fun with that Wikipedia page.

Crowe’s accent is great in the sense that he seems to be having a great time with it. I mean, does it have a stagey quaility that reinforces my theory that this movie is a low-key comedy? Sure, but the kid with the veiny skin and the devil voice is pretty standard-issue possession movie stuff, why not have a little fun with it.

The Rev. Gabriele Amorth (Crowe) is a noted exorcist in the Catholic Church. He is also, as we witness in his opening exorcism, a guy who appreciates that sometimes what people need isn’t an exorcism but to believe they’re getting an exorcism. As he explains to a skeptical panel of Vatican dudes later, 98 percent of his cases need doctors or therapists. The other two percent are E-vil, much in the style of the Paramount + TV show Evil, which is a giddy delight particularly if you’ve ever spent any time in CCD as a kid.

Meanwhile, it’s the latter half of the 1980s and a widowed mom, Julia (Alex Essoe), moves with her two kids — angry teenager Amy (Laurel Marsden) and traumatized little brother Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) — to a castle/former abbey in Spain that is her late husband’s sole asset of value. The plan is to renovate and flip this property to raise some cash to take back to the U.S. Neither kid is happy about moving to Spain — not Amy, who flips her mom the bird when she’s not ignoring her, and not Henry, who has been silent since he saw his father killed in a car accident. Very quickly, though, they figure out that this ancient church structure in Spain is not a particularly happy place to have moved (once you see it you’ll think that it would have been more shocking if an ancient evil didn’t dwell in its crumbling walls). Naturally, one of the children is quickly possessed and, because it’s more disturbing for younger kids to say sassy things to priests in a deep voice, Henry is the child who wins the demon lottery.

Eventually, Gabriele is sent by the pope (Franco Nero) to Spain to investigate Henry’s situation. There, Gabriele teams up with the Rev. Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto), who was told during his initial evaluation of the demon-Henry that he’s the “wrong priest.” It seems that whatever evil entity that has possessed Henry has a plan that involves Gabriele.

As I said, this movie has a strong ribbon of goofiness that runs throughout — from Crowe’s accent to Gabriele’s little Ferrari scooter to the vein-y stage-blood-heavy representation of the demon to Gabriele’s own jokiness. Some of this comedy is intentional, is what I’m saying. The rest of it — eh, I don’t think the movie minds if you find some of its lore cornball, particularly with the very “episode one” way that it ends. The idea that your child would be in the grip of something no one can diagnose and that is clearly killing him is terrifying. But this movie doesn’t really lean much on that, even though it is probably the chilling element of the movie, and as a result the movie isn’t really scary as much as it’s a kind of non-scary gothic horror that at times almost tips into camp. That said, this movie also isn’t quite as goofy as I would have wanted either, which I say as someone who, again, loves the cheeky Evil.

The Pope’s Exorcist doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen before but it lets Crowe’s Gabriele have just enough lightness to make it a basically entertaining endeavor. B-

Rated R for violent content, language, sexual references and some nudity, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Julius Avery with a screenplay by Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos, The Pope’s Exorcist is an hour and 43 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Columbia Pictures.

Featured photo: Renfield

Middle-aged dudes in the mid 1980s pin their career futures and their hopes for the financial future of Nike on a young NBA rookie named Michael Jordan in Air.

I feel like even the movie is somewhat conscious of the fact that it is not the story of a legendary athlete or even, King Richard style, the struggles of that legendary athlete’s parent but the story of some guys who really wanted to capitalize on the status of a hopefully legendary athlete to boost their basketball shoe line. The movie is more stakes-adjacent than stakes-having.

Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) is unimpressed with the meh candidates Nike is looking at to rep their unpopular line of basketball shoes in the coming season. Adidas and Converse are cool and that’s where the big-name players go — the Larry Birds and the Magic Johnsons — including Jordan, whose college career has made him an official One to Watch. Nike marketing guy Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) thinks Sonny should just stick to the brief from company head Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) and use the limited funds given to the basketball division to sponsor three or four lesser lights. But Sonny wants to bet the house on Jordan, even if, as Jordan’s agent David Falk (Chris Messina) tells him, Jordan is almost certain to go with Adidas.

Sonny breaks with the protocol of this type of deal and goes around Falk, traveling to North Carolina to show up at the Jordans’ home. There he meets Michael’s dad, James Jordan (Julius Tennon), and his mom, Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis), who seems to be the true gatekeeper for Michael’s career. She admires Sonny’s persistence just enough to have a brief meeting with him at their house and then later she decides — over her son’s objections — to listen to Nike’s official pitch to Michael Jordan at the company’s Oregon headquarters. (No “Michael Jordan” really appears on screen except as a hazy figure, usually turned away from the camera, who is with his family during business meetings or as the actual guy in historical footage.)

The movie spends not quite enough time with Peter Moore (Matthew Maher), the man who designs the first Air Jordan prototype that the Nike team — which also includes Howard White (Chris Tucker) — hopes to use to convince Michael to pick Nike. His scenes include a fun element of the shoe’s design, which was a purposeful decision to make the shoe more colorful than the NBA technically allowed, with Nike offering to pay the shoe fines, a factor they even planned to work into their marketing. Personally, I found some bits about the artistry of the shoe a fun part of this movie about the making of a hugely culturally significant athletic shoe line. Like, more sneakers in this sneaker movie, would be my preference.

I think we’re maybe supposed to think the heart of this movie is Damon’s ostentatiously schlubby Sonny, with his genuine desire to help Michael Jordan become a legend and his “Gil really needs a sale” energy. And maybe a little bit of our heart is supposed to be with Rob and his sad divorced-dad tale of bribing his daughter with Nikes. I don’t think even the movie believes we’re rooting for Phil Knight, who is giving flaky proto-tech-bro vibes. But come on, with no real Michael Jordan in the picture, the heart of the movie is Davis’ Deloris Jordan, who knows the score when it comes to both her son’s abilities and the way the world is going to want things from him. Casting Davis makes Deloris an easy character to care about — Davis brings weight and substance to the sort of dippy story of, not unlike Tetris, a licensing deal.

Without Davis, I think this movie would feel too lightweight, too lacking in stuff to fill out its nearly two-hour run time. With Davis, the movie feels just substantial enough to justify being in a theater — but just barely. It felt very similar to me to those HBO historical-events movies, particularly to something like The Late Shift, about the Jay Leno-David Letterman Tonight Show story.

If you are moderately interested in this side story from the career of Michael Jordan, Air is moderately interesting. C+

Rated R for language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com, but probably also to signify to grown-up movie goers that this is a grown-up movie where nothing explodes, which is accurate. Directed by Ben Affleck with a screenplay by Alex Convery, Air is one hour and 51 minutes long and distributed by Amazon Studios, which means that it will eventually show up on Prime Video, though it is slated for a longer theatrical release than originally planned, according to Wikipedia.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (PG)

It’s-a him, Mario, in an animated adventure that really just made me feel some nostalgia for OG Nintendo Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Not unlike AppleTV+’s Tetris, which somehow seems like the mashup of the two theatrical releases I watched this week, The Super Mario Bros. Movie made me think more about the video game from which it originated — in my case the console and Game Boy versions of the game in 1990something — than anything happening in the movie itself. I was the most casual of video and arcade game players back in the 20th century so it’s interesting how much both games still were part of the wider culture.

Here, we meet brothers Mario (voice of Chris Pratt) and Luigi (more engagingly voiced by Charlie Day), who have just started a plumbing business and sunk all their money into a pretty great TV ad, chock full of “Mama Mia!” type accents from these two otherwise nonspecific American-accented guys. I mention this only because the ad is sort of charmingly goofy in a way most of the rest of this movie isn’t.

After their first job goes wrong because of an angry dog, they try to “save Brooklyn” by fixing some water main problems in the road. Instead, though, they get sucked into a, let’s say, alternate dimension and, while traveling along a rainbow thing I’m just going to call bifrost, are separated. Luigi is flung into a lava world ruled by Bowser (voice of Jack Black), sort of a large battle-turtle intent on capturing all domains and using what Wikipedia tells me is a Super Star to gain invincibility. Mario lands in Mushroom Kingdom, which is sad because he doesn’t like mushrooms, but it’s a generally brighter happier place even if it too is under threat of invasion by Bowser.

Mushroom Kingdom’s Princess Peach (voice of Anya Taylor-Joy) plans to get the support of King Cranky Kong’s (voice of Fred Armisen) army to face Bowser and his army, which leads to Mario fighting the king’s son Donkey Kong (voice of Seth Rogen) and a fun sorta-friendship between the two, which was one of this movie’s better elements. Mario wants to defeat Bowser to get Luigi back — their brotherly relationship is also a nice element but, as they spend most of the movie apart, we don’t get nearly enough of it.

There is a flatness to this movie — it’s colorful and action-packed, but there just isn’t a lot to grab on to in terms of the story or the characters we spend the most time with. Pratt’s Mario is kind of a nothing despite being at the center of this story. He doesn’t have the personality of, say, Pratt’s Emmet in the Lego movies. His adventure partners Donkey Kong and Luigi bring a little something to their roles— the notes of sweetness and weirdness I think you need to make this kind of thing work — but not enough to give the whole movie life. Princess Peach is also kind of an empty character. I realize this is a cartoon based on a video game, but I feel like the movie just hangs it all on the admittedly eye-catching, gameplay-riffing-on visuals without giving the movie even the, uhm, depth of, like, the Trolls movies or that odd noir Pikachu.

The motivations of Bowser (to marry Princess Peach whether she likes it or not) are a little disturbing and a bunch of adorable creatures are threatened with slaughter but this is otherwise probably a fairly older-elementary-schooler acceptable movie. It’s just not a particularly memorable one. C+

Rated PG for action and mild violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and co-directed by Pierre Leduc and Fabien Polack with a screenplay by Matthew Fogel, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is an hour and 32 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by Universal Studios.

Featured photo: The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Chris Evans and Michelle Rodriguez make a good questing-buddies pair in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

And I should explain up front that I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, so surely there are Easter eggs about characters and gameplay that I missed. But not knowing that world doesn’t get in the way of understanding or basically enjoying what is a pretty straightforward adventure tale set in a magic-y world.

Edgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) are partners in a smash-and-grab operation in the land of Neverwinter (it reads as a more chill Middle-earth) — a team that over time expands to include the so-so sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) and the con artist Forge (Hugh Grant). We meet Edgin and Holga as they are rounding two years in prison after a heist they planned at the behest of the wizard Sofina (Daisy Head) goes wrong and they get caught. Edgin only took the job because the location contained a magical scroll that he hoped could bring his wife back from the dead, reuniting her with Edgin and their daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman), who was only a baby when her mother died. She was mainly raised by Edgin and Holga, and for the last two years has been living with Forge — or so Edgin hopes. He asked Forge to take care of Kira when it became clear Edgin wasn’t going to escape and now he devises a somewhat stupid plan to bust himself and Holga out of prison so he can go and find his daughter.

Once they’re free, they find that Kira has been taken care of by Forge, who has really grown to relish his fatherly role. He’s enjoyed it so much, in fact, that he has convinced Kira that her dad was a jerk who abandoned her and, now that Forge (with the help of the wizard Sofina) has made himself lord of Neverwinter, he’s provided Kira with a very comfortable life and is reluctant to give it or her up.

When it becomes clear that Edgin and Holga will have to go a sneaky route to win back Kira, Edgin searches for sorcerer Simon, who now has a mediocre magic show (but a very capable pickpocket racket), and for a druid named Doric (Sophia Lillis) whose shapeshifting abilities can help the team make their plan to get into Forge’s castle, rescue Kira and find the life-giving scroll so Edgin can reunite his family.

Meanwhile, Forge and Sofina, who is secretly one of the bad guys known as Red Wizards, have some sort of nefarious plan of their own connected to a forthcoming tournament.

Showing up for too short a time is Xenk (Regé-Jean Page) as an extremely noble lone wolf warrior. The chemistry between him and the more cynical Edgin is a nice note.

“Nice” is probably an overall fair descriptor for this movie — which can sound like faint praise but isn’t really. It’s unrealistic that every movie be the best thing ever or a total mess. Honor Among Thieves is neither, it’s just light fun and uncomplicated good times. It cribs a bit from the Avengers movies, it has the fairy-tale-ish vibes of many other things but without the grimness (Game of Thrones) or the self-seriousness (many a Tolkien property) that can weigh that sort of thing down. The core characters are basically enjoyable to spend time with, even if Edgin is the only one we really get to know. And Pine is just enough of a scruffily charming hero to make that work, without ever tipping over into aggressive glibness.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is the sort of movie you don’t need to rush out to see but that is entertaining enough if you find yourself in a theater watching it. B-

Rated PG-13 for fantasy action/violence and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein with a screenplay by Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley and Michael Gilio, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is two hours and 14 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Paramount Pictures.

Featured photo: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Keanu Reeves gets what feels like more fight scenes and even sparser dialogue in John Wick: Chapter 4.

John Wick (Reeves) has recovered from being shot by friend/Continental Hotel manager Winston (Ian McShane) at the end of the last movie (a benevolent shooting, I think?). He’s hanging out with the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne, who is still having the very best time), who gets him a new suit. And off John Wick goes to the desert, to try to get someone to lift his “excommunicado” status in the assassin world (which means that killers worldwide are looking to take him out to collect a sizable bounty).

Meanwhile, back at the Continental, the classy assassin hang-out, the High Table (the underworld’s ruling body) has decided to mark the hotel as condemned, which is even worse than when it was deconsecrated or whatever in the last movie. An hour after The Harbinger (Clancy Brown) shows up to deliver the news about the hotel’s condemnation, the building is demolished like a faded Las Vegas casino and Concierge Charon (Lance Reddick, who was awesome in everything and died on March 17 and will be missed) is, uhm, let go.

The person behind all of this punishment aimed at Winston for the crime of helping John Wick is the Marquis (Bill Skarsgard), a snootypants we will enjoy rooting against. The High Table has given him a blank check to do whatever needs to be done to put an end to John Wick, both the man and the legend. The Marquis calls into service Caine (Donnie Yen), a former assassin who like John Wick tried to leave the life behind (possibly agreeing to have himself blinded to do it?). But he has a daughter and to keep her safe he occasionally freelances, I guess. He reluctantly takes the job to kill John Wick, an old buddy.

Caine is also old buddies with Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada), manager of the Osaka Continental, which is where John Wick goes for help. Shimazu’s concierge and daughter Akira (Rina Sawayama) isn’t so keen on Wick’s presence at the hotel; she’s less concerned with old friendship and more concerned with their continued survival in the here and now, especially when High Table henchmen show up with Caine.

Also at the Osaka is a character we come to know as Mr. Nobody (Shamier Anderson), a contract killer with a loyal dog because somebody in this movie has to have a Very Good Boy who can do cute doggie faces in the midst of balletic violence. Mr. Nobody is in the game to get John Wick but first he wants the “getting” price to go up and helps orchestrate this bounty inflation by occasionally knocking off competing assassins.

There are several memorable set-piece battles in John Wick Chapter 4: Caine fights a series of dudes in a kitchen using motion sensors; John Wick fights guys standing in the street while fast-moving traffic flows around and between them; John Wick fights in a building as we watch from overhead, giving an illusion that we are watching a continuous shot filmed through several rooms; multiple characters fight multiple characters on a steep set of stairs with the up and down climbing and falling part of the choreography of the fight. And in between that are several scenes of smaller battles and one-on-one fights. These scenes are all exciting and extremely well-choreographed. Like, there needs to be an Oscar that recognizes the skill of creating an energetic, technically beautiful fight scene that is also believable both for two humans to participate in and in the context of the movie. There needs to be an Oscar for this and it needs to go to a John Wick movie because this is a skill.

And yet.

And yet maybe this movie could have had fewer of these scens? I can’t believe I’m saying that but I think fewer and better highlighted would have been the way to go with these stretches of the movie which, when I think back to consider them individually, really were a marvel. In the movie, however, there is a frosting on frosting on frosting effect in the way this movie piles up fight scenes without the cake that allows the punch of sugar to really come through. The original John Wick was an hour and 41 minutes long. Each sequel has been a little bit longer than its predecessor, with this one clocking in at two hours and 49 minutes. Somewhere in here is a solid, well-paced, energetic hour-and-50-minute movie. But this nearly three-hour version gets bogged down in its questing — John Wick going here to engage with this person, then there, then we’re meeting these people. This has always been a part of these stories, particularly in the second and third installments, but it seemed a little more spinning-its-wheels here than it did in previous movies. Also, I did have the sinking feeling that some of this was setting up potential side-quel elements — Caine, Akira and of course Mr. Nobody and his dog.

So, Chapter 4? Loved the Keanu, as usual; loved the Fishburne and the McShane absolutely acting to, not just the back row, but the people on the street in front of the theater. Loved the precision of the fights, loved the ideas and the cleverness that went into them. This movie isn’t the gleeful ride of its immediate predecessor but it was an overall better-than-average bit of entertainment. B

Rated R for so so so much killing (“pervasive strong violence and some language” is how the MPA describes it, according to filmratings.com). Directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch, John Wick: Chapter 4 is two hours and 49 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by Lionsgate.

Featured photo: John Wick: Chapter 4